Build Not Buy

You can pay for a good wedding, but that doesn’t make you a good husband

You can buy a ball, but it doesn’t make you a player

Even going to the gym and paying for a personal trainer doesn’t make you fit – you have to do the work and build up your body.

Here’s what I’m seeing a lot of: people buying and selling, but few building.

I think this is what separates just any old event from a community driven event, or separates any old product from a lifestyle product.

What I’m seeing even fewer of is people who don’t just buy an education and theory, but build learning and reality.

Your Leading Thoughts

Take a moment and tell us – what are you building?

What is the market for building?

Archived Comments

http://radsmarts.com Robin Dickinson

Nice distinction, Scott.

We’re building a mutual sales team – the Centurions. This is a small community of highly motivated entrepreneurs and business people who are working together, using the incredible connection power of social media, to build each others businesses.

‘Building’ is a great word to describe this group’s mandate…

Building shared success.
Building mutual muscle.
Building trust.
Building a solid, global sales pipeline.
Building reputation.
Building people.
Building a sustainable value model.

The market for building is now and is unlimited. It’s a builder’s market. We all have the tools and the dreams – and the time is right. It will take some courage – some guts – to get started – so come on, building needs some boldness!

The ever-so bloated time of broadcasting information is being eclipsed by an exciting new era of building.

Bring it on!

Robin

http://changememe.com/ Louise McGregor

We’re building a collaboration portal within the company – it’s a big step for us but it will let us build communities of practice across the company.

malcolm12boxes

What am I building? I’m hoping to build a conversation about business development so that I can better address where people are actually starting from in my face-to-face work.

I read your post this morning and then revised what I had planned to write (which was simply the second in a series of articles). The result is here. http://wp.me/pyqLh-cH

The next step is to write to everyone I know over the next couple of days and ask them to contribute to the conversation. I really have no idea what will happen.

Do join in. Please.

http://twitter.com/98rosjon Jonny Rose

Purley 2.0 – Building a self-sustaining online community that benefits the local offline community. Using social media to empower and connect local people with the intention to create a new kind of community engagement.

People will be using my project as a [successful] case study for years to come!

/ Scott Gould

Robin

Once again I see the theme… Building = value, buying = volume.

The market now is for building. The big move from creation to curation is a move from buying to building, is a move from volume to value.

I agree – “It’s a builder’s market” – it is. The tools have been created, the content created – now we must curate it.

Certainly, it takes guts to do this. There is a risk attached because you are going against the grain of all the volume players out there.

Bring it on indeed!

Scott

http://radsmarts.com Robin Dickinson

And in a community that is building, you have no place to hide. Lack of participation and effort stands out. Non load-bearing members are quickly spotted, named and culled.

It’s much easier to hide in the chaos and scrum of the ‘buying’ community. It’s easy to look busy and tread water in the oceans of the endless data and mind-numbing sales noise of ‘Read me!’ ‘Follow me!’ ‘Buy me!’.

/ Scott Gould

LOL – I hope it’ll be successful!

So, how is this going?

Scott

tonyhollingsworth

Thanks for sharing Scott – love it!
I am building community online and by doing so, enhancing serendipity offline. Just look at the rise of “coffee mornings” or “tweetups” here in Sydney. Our friend @robin_dickinson would be the first to see the value of this as many members of his “centurian” community have originated from such “offline enhanced serendipity”

The market for this type of building is only just beginning to “wake up” to the opportunity it presents. Technologies have always existed to support this activity of building, but only in recent years have “the planets aligned” – essentially, everything is becoming social, and the real-time web is facilitating this.

Cheers
Tony Hollingsworth

/ Scott Gould

Louise,

Good to hear from you – been too long!

Can you share the link here for everyone else to follow?

Scott

http://twitter.com/carlhaggerty Carl Haggerty

Hi Scott,

Interesting post and one which has got me and @martinhowitt talking (doesn’t take much though if i’m honest)

We are thinking that you still have to buy something – we view it this way:

You buy capacity to build capability and you build capability to buy more capacity and so on…

Good stuff

/ Scott Gould

hey Carl, Martin

So – it creates a vicious cycle!

LOL – I know what you mean. You buy some to grow some. So, you can’t learn to drive without a car and without lessons, for example.

But don’t you agree most people today buy, and then not stop at that?

Scott

/ Scott Gould

Right on – no place to hide and duck and dive.

Certainly, for building, everyone must bring their A-game. No room for those who aren’t building.

Scott

/ Scott Gould

Malcolm – a great peice. I will re-read and comment later – but thank you for posting out attention to this.

How are you finding that your building is challenged by the buy mentality?

Scott

http://changememe.com/ Louise McGregor

It’s internal – and not launching until October so it won’t be possible to link. Technically it’s not that complicated, it’s based on sharepoint. But getting through technical barriers and setting up the governance/funding have been challenging.

Can’t wait til launch day!

/ Scott Gould

Well, please do let us know when it launches!

http://twitter.com/98rosjon Jonny Rose

Still in the seed-scattering stages – but hoping to gather soon. I’ve amassed a team of 5 so far to spread the burden.

Started having dialogue with the local business association and have touched base with a few business owners.

Major problem: we can’t encourage Purley businesses to use SM until we can prove there are online users in Purley to converse with (there are about 7! not brilliant).

Remedy: We’re going to build a broadcast platform (town website) then gradually socialise the content. Hoping to interview lots of people and business owners and put them in the website (EGO will draw them to the site and hopefully get them to spread content to neighbours, local friends etc)

Exciting times!

/ Scott Gould

Sounds like you’re moving forward nicely.

Have you thought about seeing how many Facebook users there are in Purley?